At the Whitney Biennial three artworks, plus Semiotext(e)

 

Yesterday CFA had a very dedicated tour of the Whitney Biennial of American art, its last dance in the amazing Marcel Breuer’s building before moving to the new location, as everybody knows. We have spent there more than three hours. Was it enough? Of course not. Many of the 103 artists selected by the three curators will still remain unknown to us. This is indeed the bad side of having this huge, sometimes even “encyclopedic” group shows that have been the landmark of the last two decades: the visitor is asked to select, according to his own sensitivity, and to the time he has at his disposal. Therefore, probably the point is not to say whether a Biennial is good or not, because every visitor will surely find, among the multitude of artists, at least one work he does appreciate. In our case we picked three artworks, all of them located on the third floor.

 

They are framed by what is not properly an artwork, but a kind of replacement, or a displacement for that matter, as it was the extraordinary performance by Ernst Reijseger filmed by Werner Herzog during the last edition. This year, the ideas brought to the attention of the public by Semiotext(e), invited as a collective to take part to the Biennial, are the evidence of how art is in needs, nowadays more than ever, of valid theories and information. Listening to Sylvère Lotringer interviewing Paul Virilio has given us many good keys to read, for example, the installations by Bjarne Melgaard and Travis Jeppesen, Channa Horwitz’s visual novel or the two small Danh Vo’s. On this floor it is also to be found the ambitious installation by Dashiell Manley, perhaps too slow and complex for this sort of circumstances.

 

July 18, 2015